Cora's Dream Width

My BtVS 20th Anniversary DVD box set arrived today. Made in 2017, purchased in 2023. Time to re-watch Buffy from Season 1 through Season 7. This time, I want to be intentional in my watch, rather than just binging my way through. I've only seen Season 1 and Season 2 a couple of times - I don't know that I truly have episodes from either of those seasons I love.

We're starting off this rewatch with the very first episode: Welcome to the Hellmouth. Originally aired March 10, 1997.

• I have always loved the cheesy intro "In every generation there is a chosen one. She alone will stand against the vampires, the demons, and the forces of darkness. She is the slayer." 
• I am not a fan of the crush Xander has on Buffy - mostly because in the first two seasons, he seems convinced if Angel weren't around he'd have a shot (she sees you as a brother - even if there were not another man on her radar, it still wouldn't happen, Xander!).
• I love Principal Flutie! I forget why we get Snyder, but I imagine Flutie gets eaten (because Hellmouth)
• Giles doesn't introduce himself to Buffy as her new watcher until about halfway through the episode.
• I hadn't realized how self-centered Buffy starts out - I strongly remember the monologue that ends with "Giles...I'm 16. I don't want to die" which is a solidly understandable self-centered moment. I completely forgot how Buffy was trying to deny her destiny and had hoped by moving to Sunnydale she would have escaped it.
• "Who are you?" "Let's just say I'm a friend" "Maybe I don't want a friend" "I didn't say I was yours." Okay, but then whose friend would Angel be then? He hasn't been around humans much since the 1950s when he was hung in Hyperion Hotel because of the Thesulac demon.
• I never realized until this watch - with the death of Jesse, Buffy rounds out the Willow & Xander group (Jesse used to fill that role)
• I freaking love the Master - he's my second favorite big bad behind Glory. I love how Mark Metcalf plays him. He's creepy, he's funny, he's overly dramatic. Just *chef's kiss* perfection. Especially for a show starting out with a specific goal to be akin to a "B rated horror movie."

I didn't catch anything foreshadowed here (other than the harvest, but given that's the plot of the next episode/within the same season, I don't really count that as foreshadowing for this show). The intro does still hold up well in 2023 - the High School Cliques portrayed in media have always been unrealistic, but the high school students in this series are bound by standard "parents are at least mildly aware of what their teenagers are doing" scenarios which more closely resemble the "real" world. One of the things I really dislike about the more modern teen soap operas/dramas is how unrealistic it is...you're telling me in a group of 4-5 girls, only one has a parent (or a set of parents) who is at least mildly aware of what their daughter is up to? (and even then - she's able to stay out all night and doesn't get caught or have consequences for it?).

Zoom apparently updated their terms of service to include AI learning. Initially, there was no opt-out option. Not surprisingly, Zoom eventually realized this was a Bad Idea (TM) - likely their paying clients complained (you're only supposed to be the product if something is offered for free).

Zoom updated their blog post explaining the AI Use cases on August 7th, 2023 at 11:30 a.m. PT. As of that date/time, there is an opt-out feature available to account owners/administrators of Zoom. Zoom has also clarified what they are using the AI learning for:
We recently introduced two powerful generative AI features – Zoom IQ Meeting Summary and Zoom IQ Team Chat Compose

Which makes sense - usually AI learning in meetings is to handle the dull task of meeting minutes or improve automatic closed caption.

I fully understand people's concerns about their intellectual/creative property being used by AI, and I hear that. To help assuage these concerns, I would like to point out how predictive text was originally vastly improved thanks to Enron emails. Can someone use something like ChatGPT to write up something, and can that something potentially have your own speaking voice/plot points in it? Yes. Will that happen? For School/college and fake Internet points - probably. It's more likely (and more profitable) for AI generation to be used for things like troll/deep fake farms, though. Eventually, that has the chance to evolve into deep fakes that can replace low paying customer service roles (the jobs corporations have a need for, but also view as an expense that should be kept as low as possible, rather than as a way to try to generate more profit and something to invest in).

From an employment stance - the best way to combat AI is to reach out to your government representatives with your concerns and as them to support workers' rights.

From a knowledge/creative stance - there are some actions you can take on an end user level, but at the end of the day, we are at the mercy of whatever online platform we are using to share our knowledge, thoughts, ideas, or creative works. Whether that is zoom for phone/video/D&D calls, Tumblr for memes, or Dreamwidth for journaling/fandom.

Yesterday, I just started climbing out of the funk I was in.

• Shark Tank: I'm now up to Season 6, I think. At this point, it's pretty much background noise. I have been surprised to discover I have purchased some items that had premiered on Shark Tank (EyeBloc to cover up laptop webcams)


• I started back in the groove of house care tasks


• I am reading my way through Ghost Story of the Dresden Files. I am enjoying it thus far. I am liking where Molly's story is going. I have found I don't really start to get into the story being told until the final 25% or so of the novel, though.


• I dove a bit into a Sims 4 rabbit hole - started playing a combination of Random Legacy Generator and the ISBI (I'm Surrounded By Idiots) challenge. I do want to give the Opposite Twins challenge a try, but with a twist - the 'girly' twin is actually super jealous of the goth twin because the goth twin is 'rebelling' against the family dynamic, and the 'girly' twin isn't brave enough to do so...or with two boy twins - one's a jock and one is a nerd. Jock is jealous of his nerd brother. I'm aware of the Disney Princess Challenge though it does not currently spark my fancy.


• I have done a little bit with Diablo 4 Season 1 (I am a Barbarian), but took a break to do Sims 4 on the weekend, and then had neck pain from sleeping wrong come Monday, so it's been a hot minute since I've done much in the way of Season progression.
  
  
• I did learn about (and download!) the DLC for Horizon Zero Dawn: Forbidden West - Burning Shores. Horizon Zero Dawn was the first video game I got into in adulthood (spent my childhood playing Mario Brothers and the like), which meant I was able to get really immersed and invested in the story/lore of the game - I didn't recognize all of the standard "yes - that is indeed the language video games speak" at the time.
  
• I am close to getting done with the first hanging basket I am crocheting - I am planning on making 3 (one yellow, one orange, one red)


• I edited the first two sticky posts in my journal (they were enormous to scroll past - they're just standard "about me" pages, not much to write home about, honestly)

Since I found myself writing a novel's worth in response to vriddy's post about Late Stage Capitalism: The Enshitification model in the comments section, I thought I would do the "modern day social media" thing and also share to my own journal:

In my own opinion - In a capitalistic culture: Communities are not profitable. When you work to make them profitable, that is when user experience starts to go downhill and you get to enshitification. Because at that point, you are exploiting your user base. That is not to say you can't make any profit off of them - I do firmly believe businesses should be able to make profit, but I believe the financial value of such community spaces is not "Daddy Bezos" levels of money.

To pivot slightly for a moment, last year, Amazon finally announced they are selling their Alexa devices at cost (Google is in a similar boat, Apple is just eating the cost of Siri as part of the cost of doing business because Siri is baked into all of their hard/soft ware devices), and thus Amazon lost $10B last year. For simplification, I will just refer to these smart home assistants as "Alexa" (that was the NSA Listening device I invited into my home and Amazon was the company I saw mentioning this)

Here is the thing about the Alexa devices -They are incredibly useful and users love them. Alexa devices get used to turn on/control the lights, set timers, set alarms, turn on/control the thermostat in the home, turn on/control the smart vacuum in your home, a personal jukebox for music, reading aloud audiobooks or podcasts. They are incredibly useful at all of these things and this has an inherent value to the individuals (like me) who use these devices. However...with the way Alexa is set up today - none of these use cases generate profit. No one in the capitalistic world gives a shit about personal data for when someone wakes up, goes to bed, takes a nap. If they care about things like what podcasts, audiobooks or music you are listening to or your location, they have that data elsewhere (Amazon has that data on Amazon music already for example, but I use Spotify with Alexa, so Spotify has my music user data). On paper, this device just cannot be profitable in traditional capitalistic models. That does not mean it does not have value just that the value isn't seen in Capitalism.

Online communities are the same way - A wide swatch of users want to use online spaces to talk about/share things that are not profitable in the traditional capitalistic model (porn, fanfic, fandom, creative agony aunt writing, in depth reviews/critiques about shows/books/music/games/videos/Content Creators, finding other people to engage with an activity together).

I don't think Online Communities had any kind of Capitalistic Profit model until Facebook became big and changed the game. Message boards in the 2000s certainly weren't asking for money (and the ones I was on seemed to be run by individuals who ran the forum as their form of hobby - not dissimilar to people who buy up cars and work on them for "free" or people who buy up a server and learn software coding, or people who would buy a domain name + web hosting to make their own personal blog). The concept of "hustle culture" (your hobby must be profitable) wasn't really a thing back then. Whether it was not a thing because downward financial mobility hadn't yet started, or it wasn't a thing because there was no "Internet" to connect you to people who wanted to buy your RenFaire jewelry year round, I am not sure.

If we look at reddit specifically, we can see the evolution from "I was born in the days when online spaces were hobbyist pursuits, even by the people who were creating the space/paid for the servers" to "I now exist in an era where it is expected these hobbyist pursuits will generate income for myself/my family."

Reddit originally was an online community that was clearly not designed to be "the next best" profitable thing. It was just an online community of anonymous people with rules against doxxing people. People joined (or didn't!) for the culture at reddit. Slowly over the years, the owners of Reddit started thinking about how to take the online community they have (that they clearly were able to afford to pay to run and I assume they were able to pay a living wage to their staff) and generate even more money off of their user base. They were thinking "what is the 'next step' for my business?" There was no thought on "What purpose does my business serve for others" and no thought on "Does it even make sense for my business to be traditional Capitalism profitable?"

Slowly reddit started to implement more and more modern social media - you now must have at least an email address to sign up (in the past you could just pick a user name and password and go - if you wanted to run off and get married to that username, you could add your email address, but it was not required). My front-page started showing me posts designed to "suck me in" and keep me on reddit for hours rather than content I was originally there for or the niche content from the less popular subreddits I was on. And then the decision to kill 3rd party apps happened. Not because reddit needs money - they seem to be fine from the quick 5 minute google search I did (they seem to have the same over inflated value popular with many social media businesses). In the past, when reddit has needed money to cover servers, they have reminded people about Reddit Premium and asked for money...Reddit Premium still exists. It is $5.99/mo ($49.99/year), it creates the ability to gift users badges, and it allows you to surf reddit ad free (there's a few other features I never used/cared about).

It is completely understandable for individuals to want their business to be profitable, but if you're looking to get onto a Forbes list, communities just are not the way to do it. Communities are full of human beings being human and Capitalism has a long history of showing humans being human is not profitable unless you are exploiting them (slavery immediately comes to mind - it is well and alive today and is a huge help in creating our electronic devices).

Edit to Add: An example of online content that is not profitable under the traditional capitalistic model: Wikipedia. They regularly have to do fund raising and ask visitors to donate. Wikipedia's business model depends heavily donations. To note, Wikipedia does have a direct path to profitability - just go private in the education sector and hide behind an expensive paywall like the majority of educational material existing in Capitalism looking to make a profit does (whether it is classes, textbooks, medical journals, research journals, etc).

That awkward moment when it's late, and you know you should go to bed, but you are 52% of the way through Rule of Wolves, shit just got real, and you are no quitter.

The saddest part is: I know what happens in the story. This is literally why I spoiled myself. And yet, it does not work this time.

Canadian fires have lead to poor Air Quality Index (AQI) in my area. I woke up around 5am and tossed and turned for a bit. Finally decided to just get up for the day around 6am when the AQI rating was 166 (I wish I had checked it before that). I dragged an air purifier out of storage to help with the feeling of "general discomfort" (and allergy symptoms) that aroused me from my slumber.

I had purchased an air purifier back in September 2022 when my Senior Kitty (Smudge) was having breathing troubles. AQI in the house was fine - Smudge was just getting older. I helped him cross the Rainbow Bridge a month or so later, and over the winter put the air purifiers into storage.

On the "general discomfort" front - I could tell I was spending more energy on breathing than I normally would. I was able to breathe fine, my body was just expending extra energy on breathing. Likely even while I was trying to sleep (which ironically is when our bodies are consuming less oxygen).

Condensing many micros into one because this isn't Twitter and people aren't here to have their feeds spammed by someone typing out every single sentence thought.

• date your post - anghraine on Anatomy of a Dreamwidth Post

• I found out I have alexithymia. I'm not sure how I feel about that.

• Started reading the Shadow and Bone trilogy on Saturday. I am hooked. I have already finished out the first two books. I start the third tomorrow. 
  • I am both happy and dissatisfied about the lack of detail on the main protagonist and the main antagonist (as well has the main antagonist's ancestor) in the trilogy)

I remembered for roughly the third time that I need to call my psychiatrist to reschedule an appointment I missed in...February? March? April? Sometime when it was still "winter" in my area. That was also around the time my meds wore out.

At the time, I was in the Overwhelm(TM), but eventually I climbed my way out of that. Since then, I've just been chilling behind not only a wall of awful (scheduling an appointment requires Using The Phone App 😱😱😱😱 (this is how I refer to using my cell phone as an actual phone - it's usually a fancy pocket computer for texting on the Internet and occasionally texting via SMS 99.999% of the time). I brute force myself through regular phone calls when needed for work (after giving myself a pep talk of "You can do hard things, you've got this!"), but when it comes to personal? Wall of awful. It's ironic that I used to work in a call center (which is actually likely where my aversion for the telephone originates - I took ~50 calls a day. The calls themselves weren't stressful, just the pace of taking that many per day to ensure whatever magical KPI of the month, that I had no control over, wouldn't get hit - usually "did the customer call back within 3 days? IT IS BECAUSE OF YOU!" or...you know, they dropped their phone in the toilet and I had no way to predict that after helping them with a billing question? "Excuse me, ma'am, are you planning on dropping your phone in the toilet? Here's the number for Asurian just in case you change your mind").

I remembered a second time sometime in May when a work friend (who I helped get diagnosed for ADHD by pointing out the community driven diagnostic criteria to) was talking about how I can get my meds set up through our insurance. I was still stuck behind a wall of awful, and then had a wall of shame in my way.

Fast forward to earlier this evening (about to be "last night" in ~29 minutes - clearly I am making progress on making smart choices about when to go to sleep 🙄). I remembered for a third time I needed my meds. I knew my blockers, I was ready to overcome my wall of awful for using a phone. That was no longer the problem. The problem was the wall of shame, the personal narrative of: How could you forget, and then remember, and then purposely forget, and then procrastinate? Is your doctor going to feel you deserve medication after such a failing? Is your doctor even going to believe such an excuse? And list, I know that's just the emotion talking. I know. And here's the thing: Shame thrives in darkness. Shame thrives in secrecy. Shame thrives on 'don't seek anyone else's opinion. Your feeling is the 'right' one. Stick with that.

Logically speaking, I am probably not the first patient who has gotten off the medication bandwagon. I'm certainly not the first patient who has missed an appointment and then forgotten to reschedule it. I have ADHD. Forgetting something like that is literally part of the diagnostic criteria 😂 I logically know all of this. I reached out to a friend for the empathy and validation I need....only to realize "5:33pm is probably a bit late in the day to be ready for this." On a whim, called the doctor's office "because maybe I am wrong." I got the hours down (Monday-Thursday 8am-5pm), I now have a calendar notification on my personal calendar to call on Monday at 9am, and then on my work calendar asking if I have done the thing scheduled for 10am in case I miss the first notification.

Onto the second part of the story: Part of my wall of shame/awful was "I have no idea what to say to my doctor. The truth is 'I got overwhelmed, and then just forgot, but I really do need my meds - I have the energy and the inclination to do house chores, and none of the focus. My space is functional, my space is clean enough (dusty, but clean enough) but I would like to move it from clean enough to not-dusty...preferably before the next layer of dust gathers onto the part of the room I managed to have the focus for,' but what if they shame/bully me?" (a common running theme from childhood - also I'm an adult now, and I am a customer of my doctor - in the unlikely event a mental health professional shames/bullies me I can just fire them and find someone with a better bedside...if I feel the need to leave such feedback, I can use the next mental health specialist to help me with that - I have that privilege)

Having lived with a pathological liar, my knee-jerk reaction from childhood was "come up with an excuse." Partly because "lie about things where the truth would suit just as well" was modeled for me as a kid, and partly because as a kid forgetting was a moral failing, and even when I genuinely forgot, I was accused of forgetting on purpose (which, yes, I can do and ADHD is a huge help in doing that really well, but it was not something I was in the habit of doing as a child - it was never a coping mechanism I ever considered as a child. That kicked in around my 'baby adult' years). This was not a choice I wanted to make as an adult. Especially not in a medical field or with a medical diagnosis that media often portrays as "not real, those people just want drugs, they're addicts" (Yes - addicts who forget to take their meds on a regular basis and then forget to get the refill for several months...clearly textbook addict behavior right there).

To start the "wrap up" for this story - my friend was helpful. She reassured me the truth was good enough. This has happened to her. It's happened to several people. Psychiatrists who treat people with ADHD are painfully familiar with "yeah, textbook thing that happens to ADHD brains happened here," and are open to working with their patients. Which made me remember: When we talked about me being on meds as an adult (for the first time in over a decade - almost two), the first suggestion was for a non stimulant medication. I immediately jumped on that because 1 - at the time there was a shortage of stimulant meds, and 2 - I was painfully aware of the ableist horror stories of being able to get stimulant meds. I clung to the reminder that I am on a non-stimulant medication - I'm taking it as a sign of "ah, yeah...psychiatrist saw this coming a mile away. This will likely be the easier path for jumping back on meds after forgetting/not doing for a while."

All of that to say, I can do hard things. I've got this. I'll schedule an appointment (and pay the ADHD tax) on Monday.

Cross-Posted to thatautisticadhdfeel

Content: I will be talking about methods to handle anxiety, not the descriptors of anxiety. This is more of an ADHD thing.

Once upon a time, when I was a small child (like five or six), adults would give me the advice to count to ten before I got mad to allow myself "time" to calm down (and probably for practice with counting from 1-10).

Fast forward to adulthood:
It's 2018. I am dealing with really debilitating anxiety (but convincing myself it's a "normal" level of anxiety most of the time - it wasn't). I realized counting forwards from 1-10 would not be helpful because I have the words memorized to the point I don't even have to think about the order they are in. Ditto with counting backwards. So I came up with (or borrowed the idea from the Internet - unclear) this idea that I would count backwards from 100.

I know what you're thinking, "Cora - 100 is just 10 patterns of 10!" Yes! BUT! I don't often think in that number pattern, so I found myself tripping around 97, or "wait, what comes before "70?"

Eventually, I got used to that counting pattern, so I switched it up and went backwards by '5's (I already have forwards by '5's memorized - 5 was my favorite multiplication as a kid. The halfway and 'right on' points feel soothing as you count them).

I do not do any breathing exercises, as the point for me hasn't been to mediate, the point has been to force my mind to do a 180 of topics and distract myself until my emotions have calmed down some. I found this helpful for the nights when ADHD brain is wide awake (and gives zero fucks about 'we have to wake up in ~6-8 hours, it is time for sleep, my friend!). It worked when my brain wasn't over stimulated or overwhelmed, it was just struggling to "settle down" for sleep (similar to a cat that keeps giving you elevator butt when you are petting it, despite them sitting on your lap & giving other indicators of 'time to settle on my hooman's lap for a while').

The advice in this column also helped me. Breathe in for 4 breaths, hold for 7, exhale for 8. Alternatively, name 3 things you can see, 3 things you can hear, and 3 wiggle 3 body parts (toes, fingers, arms, legs).

I will leave other people with ADHD out there one final note: I forget if I learned it from a podcast, HowtoADHD, or someone else's experience on reddit, but I did hear a rumor about how when ADHD brains get bored, some of them will ramp up anxiety just for that sweet adrenaline/dopamine rush. Knowing that was empowering the last time I had that sinking "oh, no" feeling, and helped me give myself permission to avoid the anxiety train all together (It was a completely fixable situation that didn't even take ~15 seconds to come up with a solution for once I was in the right headspace again :) Definitely not worth an anxiety spiral).